Steed flies to nowhere
Emma does her party piece

Episode Rating

A good earthy Agatha Christie story as a vehicle for Steed. Not what you'd normally expect from The Avengers, but it works nonetheless.

Mrs Peel summons Steed with a rubber duck; he is needed to
attend a fancy dress party - somewhere above the south of
England!
Stranded on an unknown island, Steed and the other guests are
told that one of their number is a killer. The scenario has
been staged by Jessel to convince Kanwitch that his agent is
unbeatable. Charlotte Rampling shines in the rôle of Hana
Wild, despite unfortunately knocking out Steed, whom she
suspects to be the killer. Mrs Peel drops in to expose that
the agent is actually a pair of identical twins and Jessel
loses a shoot-out with Mrs Wild.
Steed drops in on a Mrs Peel's duck shoot, just as she bags a
brace of teddy bears - but she missed the bottle of Bollinger!

Continuity and trivia

4:28 & 47:28 - What sort of hunters are Steed and Emma anyway? At the beginning (4:28/4:15) Steed shoots at wood pigeons a nd at the end Emma shoots at the same (47:28), both of them expecting to bring down ducks.

4:55 - Steed has been invited to a party by Sir George Robertson DSO CBE KCB.

5:51 - The back of the invitation reads:

Clements Airport
18.30 hrs
..TINUM QUINTUM IDUS MARTIAS

i.e. 6:30pm on 11th March (ante diem quintum idus Martias).

7:17 - Freddy Richards looks at Steed's costume and quips, "Kitchener's Valet?" - "I was Kitchener's Valet" was an exceedingly fashionable shop on Carnaby St, frequented by the Beatles, Jimi Hendrix and The Rolling Stones, which sold old military uniforms among other things.

10:23 (10:10) - There's a Continuity error when the plane's taking off (10:10) - Steed and Mrs Wild fasten themselves into their seats, then they're peering out the portholes, then they're back in their seats again, all in the twinkling of an eye!

11:47 - We had already heard that Steed was invited by Sir George Robertson DSO CBE KCB and we now learn the supposed hosts of the other guests: Hana Wilde had been invited by Mark Salter (or Walters?), Joe Smith by Jack Peters, Max Hardy by Lance Quilley, Freddy Richards by Charlie Reed, Jason Wade by Alfred Williams (although we learn he was actually there at Jessel's behest), and Mark Dayton was invited by "a man called Godfrey".

13:37 - sea shot - stock?

14:52 - The aeroplane seems to change a lot. On the ground, it's a Handley-Page Herald, but it has new livery (and is a different model) in one shot in the air; and in another it's become a low-winged craft!

Consensus is that the aeroplane used in the episode was a twin engined Handley-Page Herald, probably about to be sold by BEA to Global Air, as all the livery has been painted out.
Opinion is divided as to whether the scenes were shot at Radlett, where Handley-Page were based, or Luton, as there are Bristol Brittanias on the field, and both Monarch and Britannia were based at Luton.

The cockpit used in some scenes was taken from a Trident 1, probably also BEA. 14:55 et passim - G-APMG serial on controls in cockpit.

17:57 - The shot from the air shows the same islands as were used in an episode of "The Prisoner".

20:43/21:13 et passim. - The house is dilapidated, has no out-size playing cards, but is otherwise more or less identical to the house in The Joker.

36:33 - Steed is completely out of focus when he enters the main hall.

39:00 - Steed says to Wade, revealed as the killer, "You were with me when Smith was killed". - but he wasn't! Everyone bar the dead Freddy and Smith were in the house, it's true, but when Smith is actually killed, Steed is search the woods, alone. (On the other hand, he was with him when Hardy was killed, so perhaps it was a late script change or an error by Macnee).

39:35 - stunt doubles for fight

40:20 - The wall nearly collapses when Wade tumbles over it.

43:28 - scratch on film right down middle of negative.

46:07 - There's a small hole in the film negative, almost dead centre.

47:56 - Moët et Chandon product placement

Running time: 49'07"

Rocky Taylor and the stuntman called in to replace him both suffered cuts tpo the wrist dutring filming.

A note on the timecodes
Where I have listed two sets of timecodes, the first is from the 2009-11 Optimum Releasing/Studio Canal DVD sets, any other timecodes are from the A&E and Contender DVD sets from a decade beforehand.
The new releases have been remastered and their frame rate has been changed, resulting in a shorter running time. However, the picture quality has increased markedly. I assume this is because they used a simple 2:2 pulldown (24 @ 25) when converting from the original film masters (film runs at 24 frames per second, while PAL runs at 25fps, the new DVDs are in PAL format).
This pulldown was also the cause of audio errors on many episodes, especially for Series 5, as the audio sped up to match the new rate (4% faster), rather than being properly pitch-shifted. Checking the dialogue sheets, which list the feet and frames of the reels, it looks like the speed change is around 5.04%, so there may be some cuts as well - probably from around the commercial breaks and ends of reels, as they amount to about 25 seconds. All my assumptions are based on the episodes having been filmed on standard 35mm film, which has 16 frames per foot and runs at 24 frames per second, so a minute of footage uses 90 feet of film (1,440 frames).
These audio errors have been corrected in the currently available DVDs, but the 2:2 pulldown remains. There is also the addition of a Studio Canal lead-in, converted to black and white to match the episode for Series Four, but colour for Series Five, adding an extra 18 or 19 seconds to the runnning time and making it harder to match timecodes with previous releases. It's annoying that it has been slapped on every single episode, Series 1-3 didn't suffer this indignity.
The previous Contender and A&E DVD releases didn't seem to suffer from these problems, so I assume they either used soft telecine and preserved the original 24fps rate of the film (my preferred option in DVDs) or they used 24 @ 25 pulldown (2:2:2:2:2:2:2:2:2:2:2:3 Euro pull-down). Let's hope the much-rumoured bluray release will revert to native 24fps with soft telecine so we won't have these problems again.

Cast notes

This episode is famous because of the calibre of its guest cast - Donald Sutherland, Charlotte Rampling, Brian Blessed are the most famous today and Brian Clemens reflect they wouldn't be able to afford them now.
James Maxwell, Hugh Manning, Leon Greene and Gary Hope were much sought-after in their time as well; so too John Hollis and Terry Plummer in their way.